Monday, 13 November 2017

Manitoba's WWI Fallen: Allan Charles Wingood of Winnipeg

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World
War, I am working on a series of blog posts that will
look at 100 Manitobans who died in action. For more about this project
and links to other soldiers, follow this link.

Allan Charles Wingood was born in Hamilton, Bermuda in 1887 and attended Warwick Academy, the oldest school in Bermuda. He came to Winnipeg in March 1907, the attraction likely being that he had an aunt, a Mrs. R. C. McDonald, who lived here.

Wingood, an accountant by trade, first settled at a boarding house on Hargrave Street and got a job with G F and J Galt as a clerk, then as a travelling salesman.

The Galts set up a food wholesaling company in Winnipeg in the 1890s and a few years later expanded their offerings into food production, creating the Blue Ribbon line of basic household grocery items like coffee, tea and extracts.

1908 ad, Winnipeg Tribune

By 1911, Wingood partnered with Charles D. Lindsay to open Lindsay and Wingood phonograph store at 284 Portage Avenue. It was a small section of the musical instrument store of Norman J. Lindsay, Charles' older brother.

The store was located at 284 Portage Avenue, the same building that housed the Lyceum Theatre, demolished in 1968 for the North Star Inn, now the Radisson Hotel.

The record store closed but he now had a job as a clerk with the Winnipeg office of McDougall and Cowan. Based in Montreal, it Canada's largest brokerage house with offices across the country.

Their local offices were located at 438 Main Street, an address that no longer exists but it was likely the office section of the now demolished Dominion Bank Building at Main Street and McDermot Avenue.